Jousse Entreprise
Paris
24 - 34 rue Louise Weiss
01 53821018 FAX 01 53821363
WEB
Gianni Motti
dal 26/10/2001 al 1/12/2001
0153821360 FAX 0153821363
WEB
Segnalato da

Philippe Jousse


approfondimenti

Gianni Motti



 
calendario eventi  :: 




26/10/2001

Gianni Motti

Jousse Entreprise, Paris

(...) "Travelling trains young people", the artist explains as a stout advocate of truancy. A handy solution? Needless to say, and it's precisely this complete offhandedness that underwrites Gianni Motti's warped methods and bungling feats. An artist whose oeuvre consists, quite simply, in making full use of his freedom. (Jean-Max Colard)


comunicato stampa

Stowaway

Last year, in Switzerland, Italian artist Gianni Motti appeared several times in a local paper. One day his stern face was featured among the teachers of a high school, all discussing matters pedophilic.

The next day, he was opening the door of a pharmaceutical laboratory. On another page he appeared in a report about household waste treatment. Until such time as irritated readers called the Neue Luzerner Zeitung to object to this leech-like stranger furtively taking up the space reserved for their local news. With his dishevelled hair, and his invariably slightly scruffy appearance, and an Italian accent that didn't stop him sitting in the seat of the Indonesian representative at the UN, Gianni Motti is a weird stowaway in the social arena, a charlatan with the gift of the gab, capable of working his way into the media, hijacking a busload of Japanese tourists to drag them off to an opening at an art centre, and, as an artistic act, putting down a red carpet, complete with limo and two Swiss guards, at the Swiss Cultural Centre in New York.

On other occasions, he has presented horoscopes on Italian TV and, like terrorists, claimed responsibility in the papers for the Los Angeles earthquake. Gianni Motti's off-limits body of work is thus a series of specific actions, usually outside the boundaries of art circles--actions that are improbable and often off-the-cuff, funny stories verging on hoaxes, that people like to tell to one another, and which are handed on less by catalogue than by word of mouth.

Like the national telepathy event he organized in Colombia in March 1997, in Bogota, to urge President Samper to resign. This is when the artist hasn't been staging his very own burial--in July 1989, after announcing his death in a local paper, Gianni Motti toured the streets of Vigo in an open coffin, borne along by the throng, in no time turning the Feast of Santa Marta into a funeral ceremony. Sport, finance, the media, international politics, parapsychology--Gianni Motti's weird actions may cover the whole spectrum of contemporary society, but on the other hand they don't offer any moral lessons, and they don't put any message across about the state and future of the world. They merely introduce absurd, ironical and momentary varieties of disorder, produce oddly festive events, and situations that are improbable, ridiculous and usually harmless.

Like the American flag planted, the way it was for the Moon walk, on the floor of the Jousse-Seguin Gallery in 1999--a way of conveying art as a lunar place, remote from the world, and extra-terrestrial. Conversely, when a fine arts student was awarded a grant to become his assistant, the master was quite embarassed. With no timetable, and happiest leading a quietly shambolic life, he sent his pupil packing, as far away as possible, preferably, offering him a round-the-world tour and a yellow shirt with the logo Gianni Motti's Assistant.

"Travelling trains young people", he explains as a stout advocate of truancy. A handy solution? Needless to say, and it's precisely this complete offhandedness that underwrites Gianni Motti's warped methods and bungling feats. An artist whose oeuvre consists, quite simply, in making full use of his freedom.
Jean-Max Colard

Opening on Saturday, October 27, 2001, 4-9 pm

Open Tuesday-Saturday 11 am-7pm

jousse entreprise
34 rue louise weiss - 75013 paris
téléphone 01 53 82 13 60 - fax 01 53 82 13 63

IN ARCHIVIO [11]
Francisco Sobrino
dal 23/10/2013 al 22/11/2013

Attiva la tua LINEA DIRETTA con questa sede